START RUNNING INTO YOUR PROBLEMS by the Raber twins
November 12, 2021
Taking responsibility. Avoid angry customers. Win more business. https://smarterroofer.com
CAUTION. AUTO-TRANSCRIBED.
[00:00:00] spk_0: good. That's not a bad thing. Bad that's bad. Average americans got the average american's got. If it's on your credit card, it's bad debt, Just get that out there, that depends what the interest if you pay it. If it's 17%, bad debt. If you pay for it every month, 20.99, the average American has this sign on the back that says I owe, I owe so off to work. I go and that's the American way I used to have a sign like that really and I got rid of it. Yeah, because you just stay home now. Yeah, exactly. I oh I oh so at home I sit doesn't rhyme. You're going to work. I'm
[00:00:36] spk_1: going
[00:00:47] spk_0: during crisis and economic depression. Small business owners often struggle with making sales and keeping the loyalty of their people because if you ain't selling it's hard to pay the bills on the ethical sales podcast. You will learn new ways to selling ethically and communicating with your people to create more loyalty and getting out of the rut of stress and frustration when there is plenty of sales, there should be plenty of profits to keep things flowing smoothly and everybody be happy? Happy. Happy. Alright guys. Today we want to talk about taking responsibility for bad workmanship or maybe when you have problems that arise, how do you take care of those problems and do those problems create opportunity or do they, are they just bad, Do they cut off opportunity, future opportunity or you think, well the goal is to avoid angry customers. If you do good work, that's one way to avoid an angry customer? If you mess up somebody else messes up on your team, you might have an upset customer. But what do you need to do in that situation? I used to think like early on in our business I worked really hard to not make any mistakes. And the truth is we all make mistakes. It's not, you know, if you're a roofer, it's not whether you're ever gonna have a leak or not, it's when it's gonna happen and then it's how you're going to take care of that. One of the first year is probably the second, maybe third year we were in business. We had landed a customer that is um one of the wealthiest guys in um in Iri county pennsylvania in my mind. I thought to myself man, this is this guy is like so important, we can't make any mistakes. And he had bought the airport, he had bought a private airport, he had a big hangar at the airport and we went in and did that hangar for him, did the metal restoration system on it. And when it was done, we were completely done on the job the next morning at like 6 30 or seven o'clock in the morning. My phone was ringing and I saw it was walt, he still owed his money but I didn't expect that he's calling me at seven in the morning saying, hey come pick up your check. You know, I was just like, what's wrong? I answer and he goes, hey, we got like five leaks in this roof. I thought you guys were done and it was raining that morning And we had gotten done on the job probably 4:00 the day before and then like midnight it started raining. I said, hey, I don't know, I mean that it was drawing really well when we left, um, I said, I'll be right up and we'll take a look at it. And it was a super simple problem. But I remember like that hour and a half drive, you know, I hadn't dealt with a lot of problems at that time in my business and it was just like, oh man, he's probably never going to give us another roof again. That's what I thought. And we went up, I took care of the problem. It was a very simple fix. I mean we had, instead of using quick cock for you refers you'll understand this to, to um um seal in a couple of fasteners that were literally bolts through this metal. We had just sprayed coatings on it a little bit heavy and the rain and opened a couple spots because it wasn't completely cured right there. The rest of the roof was completely cured and it was literally a super simple fix with the paintbrushes and quick cock and some top coat and I walked into his office after I had it fixed and I said, I apologize like I'm really sorry. And he looks at me and just kind of grins and he's like, dude, I've never had service like this from a river. He said, I've always, you know, he said, when I called you, I expected, it's going to be a couple of days before you're gonna show up because that's how I'm always treated by refers. And he was like, you're here right away. He said, not only do you have an exceptional product, I like your system, but he said, you guys have service. Like I've never gotten served like this. And he says, Hey, while you're here, he said, I have another problem on another building of ours, can you go look at this other building and before I left he gave me another, I think it was like $25,000 patch job that he gave. He cut me a check right there and and it learned me a very valuable lesson that um it's not whether you're gonna make mistakes because we all are going to make mistakes, but it's how you recover how you treat those problems. How urgent are you taking care of those customers and serving them? We're talking about bad work and it sounds like you're going up there and slopping something down and not doing a good job and a lot of times it's not, you did good work, you're close, but somewhere something slipped by and you have this leak that was not expected. Um, That's a more common scenario than going up on projects that the workmanship is just bad. Yeah. We've run into scenarios where you want to look at the guy or look at somebody and go, I don't even know how you can make it look like this. You know, I've seen you know, guys trying to paint something and get more product down. Then you're getting, trying to code it. You know, you know, more times than not. It's so it's small and you know your customer, is it the place where it could escalate from there or you can handle it right promptly take care of it, apologize, take full responsibility. Show them you're a man, it's fine. Oh, up to it. Try. Don't try to be perfect. You say we're not perfect. We do the best, we know how we do the best we can. Sometimes we make mistakes, we apologize, we move on, maybe do something for him. Maybe take him a gift card or maybe take him something to say here, apologize man, take your wife out for dinner tonight. Here's a gift card to you know, who knows where just little things that you can go above and beyond that. That takes those things and turns them into opportunities for them to go. You know this this company is different because those are opportunities leaks are opportunities. I can tell you that of all the customers that we have ever had. Our number one problem roof that we had the number one problem roof got us more leads then the roofs that we've never had any issues with because we can't went back and we had a good relationship with this person even though we had some issues that we fixed and took care of and no big deal but because we serviced them and showed up, shook hands and spoke and had a relationship and apologize and whatever. He referred us a bunch because we were on his mind and we try to do the right thing. Now if you're gonna run from your problems, they're just gonna get worse if you're not gonna answer the phone because you're afraid it's a leak. It's just going to get worse. It's what's worse than a leak is a leak and you're not answering your phone or a leak and you're not showing up to take care of it. Just look at it as opportunities. You know, you get a phone call, you might not say yes but you know what? Try to make it as positive as you can. Hey you hey I got a leak. It's an opportunity for me to go show this customer service while I'm here anyway. Do you have anything else you want us to look at? You know, so turn them into opportunities because you can, you can, you know, you can, you definitely can, you can use them to advantage, run into your problems rather than running away from them. And in that way you can keep a happy customer and that's it, That's it. That's the end of this podcast. And that is and that's a wrap and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Is it your story?
[00:07:53] spk_1: Mm hmm. Hey, hey, hey, before you leave, let me ask you a question. Have you ever struggled with knowing how to open a conversation? Have you ever struggled with knowing how to close the sale? Elias Rayburn? His twin brother Matt, put together a small booklet titled Simplify the sale. That teaches you how to open conversations and how to close the sale. You can download your copy for free at Smarter Rufer dot com forward slash simplify again, download your copy for free at Smarter Rupert dot com forward slash simplify.
[00:00:00] spk_0: good. That's not a bad thing. Bad that's bad. Average americans got the average american's got. If it's on your credit card, it's bad debt, Just get that out there, that depends what the interest if you pay it. If it's 17%, bad debt. If you pay for it every month, 20.99, the average American has this sign on the back that says I owe, I owe so off to work. I go and that's the American way I used to have a sign like that really and I got rid of it. Yeah, because you just stay home now. Yeah, exactly. I oh I oh so at home I sit doesn't rhyme. You're going to work. I'm
[00:00:36] spk_1: going
[00:00:47] spk_0: during crisis and economic depression. Small business owners often struggle with making sales and keeping the loyalty of their people because if you ain't selling it's hard to pay the bills on the ethical sales podcast. You will learn new ways to selling ethically and communicating with your people to create more loyalty and getting out of the rut of stress and frustration when there is plenty of sales, there should be plenty of profits to keep things flowing smoothly and everybody be happy? Happy. Happy. Alright guys. Today we want to talk about taking responsibility for bad workmanship or maybe when you have problems that arise, how do you take care of those problems and do those problems create opportunity or do they, are they just bad, Do they cut off opportunity, future opportunity or you think, well the goal is to avoid angry customers. If you do good work, that's one way to avoid an angry customer? If you mess up somebody else messes up on your team, you might have an upset customer. But what do you need to do in that situation? I used to think like early on in our business I worked really hard to not make any mistakes. And the truth is we all make mistakes. It's not, you know, if you're a roofer, it's not whether you're ever gonna have a leak or not, it's when it's gonna happen and then it's how you're going to take care of that. One of the first year is probably the second, maybe third year we were in business. We had landed a customer that is um one of the wealthiest guys in um in Iri county pennsylvania in my mind. I thought to myself man, this is this guy is like so important, we can't make any mistakes. And he had bought the airport, he had bought a private airport, he had a big hangar at the airport and we went in and did that hangar for him, did the metal restoration system on it. And when it was done, we were completely done on the job the next morning at like 6 30 or seven o'clock in the morning. My phone was ringing and I saw it was walt, he still owed his money but I didn't expect that he's calling me at seven in the morning saying, hey come pick up your check. You know, I was just like, what's wrong? I answer and he goes, hey, we got like five leaks in this roof. I thought you guys were done and it was raining that morning And we had gotten done on the job probably 4:00 the day before and then like midnight it started raining. I said, hey, I don't know, I mean that it was drawing really well when we left, um, I said, I'll be right up and we'll take a look at it. And it was a super simple problem. But I remember like that hour and a half drive, you know, I hadn't dealt with a lot of problems at that time in my business and it was just like, oh man, he's probably never going to give us another roof again. That's what I thought. And we went up, I took care of the problem. It was a very simple fix. I mean we had, instead of using quick cock for you refers you'll understand this to, to um um seal in a couple of fasteners that were literally bolts through this metal. We had just sprayed coatings on it a little bit heavy and the rain and opened a couple spots because it wasn't completely cured right there. The rest of the roof was completely cured and it was literally a super simple fix with the paintbrushes and quick cock and some top coat and I walked into his office after I had it fixed and I said, I apologize like I'm really sorry. And he looks at me and just kind of grins and he's like, dude, I've never had service like this from a river. He said, I've always, you know, he said, when I called you, I expected, it's going to be a couple of days before you're gonna show up because that's how I'm always treated by refers. And he was like, you're here right away. He said, not only do you have an exceptional product, I like your system, but he said, you guys have service. Like I've never gotten served like this. And he says, Hey, while you're here, he said, I have another problem on another building of ours, can you go look at this other building and before I left he gave me another, I think it was like $25,000 patch job that he gave. He cut me a check right there and and it learned me a very valuable lesson that um it's not whether you're gonna make mistakes because we all are going to make mistakes, but it's how you recover how you treat those problems. How urgent are you taking care of those customers and serving them? We're talking about bad work and it sounds like you're going up there and slopping something down and not doing a good job and a lot of times it's not, you did good work, you're close, but somewhere something slipped by and you have this leak that was not expected. Um, That's a more common scenario than going up on projects that the workmanship is just bad. Yeah. We've run into scenarios where you want to look at the guy or look at somebody and go, I don't even know how you can make it look like this. You know, I've seen you know, guys trying to paint something and get more product down. Then you're getting, trying to code it. You know, you know, more times than not. It's so it's small and you know your customer, is it the place where it could escalate from there or you can handle it right promptly take care of it, apologize, take full responsibility. Show them you're a man, it's fine. Oh, up to it. Try. Don't try to be perfect. You say we're not perfect. We do the best, we know how we do the best we can. Sometimes we make mistakes, we apologize, we move on, maybe do something for him. Maybe take him a gift card or maybe take him something to say here, apologize man, take your wife out for dinner tonight. Here's a gift card to you know, who knows where just little things that you can go above and beyond that. That takes those things and turns them into opportunities for them to go. You know this this company is different because those are opportunities leaks are opportunities. I can tell you that of all the customers that we have ever had. Our number one problem roof that we had the number one problem roof got us more leads then the roofs that we've never had any issues with because we can't went back and we had a good relationship with this person even though we had some issues that we fixed and took care of and no big deal but because we serviced them and showed up, shook hands and spoke and had a relationship and apologize and whatever. He referred us a bunch because we were on his mind and we try to do the right thing. Now if you're gonna run from your problems, they're just gonna get worse if you're not gonna answer the phone because you're afraid it's a leak. It's just going to get worse. It's what's worse than a leak is a leak and you're not answering your phone or a leak and you're not showing up to take care of it. Just look at it as opportunities. You know, you get a phone call, you might not say yes but you know what? Try to make it as positive as you can. Hey you hey I got a leak. It's an opportunity for me to go show this customer service while I'm here anyway. Do you have anything else you want us to look at? You know, so turn them into opportunities because you can, you can, you know, you can, you definitely can, you can use them to advantage, run into your problems rather than running away from them. And in that way you can keep a happy customer and that's it, That's it. That's the end of this podcast. And that is and that's a wrap and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Is it your story?
[00:07:53] spk_1: Mm hmm. Hey, hey, hey, before you leave, let me ask you a question. Have you ever struggled with knowing how to open a conversation? Have you ever struggled with knowing how to close the sale? Elias Rayburn? His twin brother Matt, put together a small booklet titled Simplify the sale. That teaches you how to open conversations and how to close the sale. You can download your copy for free at Smarter Rufer dot com forward slash simplify again, download your copy for free at Smarter Rupert dot com forward slash simplify.